The Raggedy Man and The Rose
by thedoctordanceswithrose
Summary: The Doctor has a hard time moving on from Rose Tyler in his eleventh regeneration. Questions from Clara make the process even more difficult. A certain trip in the TARDIS makes the Doctor realize his story with Rose may not be entirely over.
1. Chapter 1: In Love

Chapter One: In Love

"Oh come on Doctor, they're just in love," said Clara smiling. "They'd just been reunited!"

"Yeah, well it'd be nice if they could have done more "reuniting" once they got off the TARDIS," grumbled the Doctor. They'd just dropped off two Swampies that had been separated by their warring families for years. The Doctor had spent the better part of an hour trying to get them home as quickly as possible and clearing his throat repeatedly in the hopes that they would break apart from their snog for a few minutes.

"Have you always been such a prude?" Clara asked.

"Yes," he said not really listening. Then he realized what she said. "No! What? I'm not a prude!" he exclaimed and started fiddling with the TARDIS controls.

"You so are! Look at you! All flustered!" she teased.

"I don't care what they were doing! I just didn't want to see it on my TARDIS!" the Doctor insisted. He straightened his bow tie in indignation.

"Prude," she said nudging his arm with hers. He shot her a look and stayed silent.

Clara walked around the console, brushing her fingers against all the controls she didn't understand. She'd been wanting to ask him a question but she hadn't known how or when to bring it up. She wondered if this was a good enough transition. She glanced around to the other side of the console where he was still fiddling with a switch. He looked calm enough. At least from what she could tell. There was still so much she didn't know about this man; this daft, wonderful, ridiculous man. Or rather, alien to be precise. She wanted to know more so she took a leap,

"Have you ever been in love, Doctor?"

The Doctor's head whipped up and she saw a darkness cross his face that she only rarely saw when his normally excited, exuberant personality was drowned out by something particularly devastating on one of their adventures. He quickly hid his expression behind a mask of calm and looked back down at the controls.

"Yes, I have," he said in a low, heavy voice. She'd only heard his voice get like that when he talked about his home planet, Gallifrey, which was not often. She wondered if it was connected.

"Was she from…your home?" Clara asked tentatively. She really didn't want to see the pain that crossed his face at its name.

"No," the Doctor said. Clara nodded and was suddenly too afraid to press him further. Judging by his reactions and answers thus far, it was not a story that ended happily. She decided to drop it and was about to apologize.

"She was human," he said suddenly, not looking up from the console.

"Oh?" said Clara quietly. She kicked herself. What a stupid answer, she thought. She wanted to ask more but she was entirely unsure what to do. She swallowed and said meekly, "What, um, what was her name?"

The Doctor moved to the side and started fiddling with a new set of buttons that he hoped Clara didn't realize were doing nothing. He clicked them loudly, trying to block out a memory of a similar conversation.

_That friend of yours. What was her name?_

"Rose," he heard himself say aloud, as well as in his head in his previous regeneration's voice. "Her name was Rose." He could feel Clara's eyes on him but he wouldn't look up.

"Can…Can I ask what happened to her?" Clara asked quietly.

"Well you're going to anyway so why not?" he said sharply, glaring at her. _Take a breath, Doctor_, he scolded himself. He looked down to see that his hands were shaking. _Why, why does this always have to come up?_ He thought with frustration. He could almost accept what happened because she's happy if people didn't keep bringing it up. It wasn't fair! He steadied himself by leaning his hands on the console.

"I'm sorry-," Clara began.

"No, no, I'm sorry, Clara," the Doctor interjected more calmly. He looked at her and saw the compassion in her eyes and the fiery curiosity behind it and gave her a small smile. He stepped back from the console and looked up to the very top of the TARDIS without seeing any of it.

"I suppose…it's…it's a bit complicated really," he said finally, eyes locked firmly upward. Then suddenly he was hit with a flash of memories so strong he felt he'd fall to his knees with the intensity of them.

_He saw it. He saw the basement at Henrik's like it was happening at this moment. He saw the girl close her eyes while the mannequin raised its hand above her. He felt his hand slip into hers and saw her look at him for the first time and felt the warmth spread into his chest and heard himself say in that Northern accent, "Run."_  
…

_I'm the Doctor by the way, what's your name?__  
__Rose. Her voice. So clear in his head. It was so beautiful.__  
__Nice to meet you Rose, run for your life!__  
_…  
_My planet's gone. I'm left traveling on my own 'cause there's no one else.__  
__There's me.__  
_…  
_He saw the Gelth. He could hear them. Then he grabbed her hand and looked at her and couldn't see or hear anything else. I'm so glad I met you.__  
__Me too. He saw her smile. Her smile._

_I want you safe, my Doctor.__  
_…  
_I was going to take you to so many places…_

The Doctor suddenly felt like one of his hearts had stopped and he gasped and jerked back to reality. He was shaking all over now and there was a burning in his eyes and throat. He saw Clara step towards him, hand outstretched but he stepped back.

"Sorry, felt a bit dizzy. 'Must've been the TARDIS. I'll check to see we're still on the right course," he said quickly, trying to brush off it all off. The pain, Clara's worry, all the memories.

Clara put her hand down and nodded. She knew that was the end of the discussion. She wanted to rush up and hug him but something stopped her and she couldn't quite place what it was. She just knew he needed space.

"I'll, um, be in my room," she said softly and left without a glance back.

The Doctor nodded without looking up and kept fiddling with the controls. When he knew she was gone, he let out a breath and put his weight against the console. _Come on, you stupid old man, she's happy. Move on_, he told himself. He clutched his head and tried to shake away the image of her smile and the sound of her voice so clearly in his head. He kicked the console and winced at the pain.

"Sorry old girl," he whispered and stroked the TARDIS. He felt it hum in sympathy. He patted her again and said, "We'll be alright. We're always alright."


	2. Chapter 2: Her Room

Chapter 2: Her Room

Weeks later, the Doctor still hadn't mentioned Rose and when Clara awoke the next morning, he'd pretended everything was normal so Clara did too and she didn't bring it up again.

She had decided to forget about it when one night Clara suddenly started awake in bed breathing heavily from a nightmare she'd been having. She'd felt it slipping away from her memory already and tried to recall it. She'd been chasing the leaf hidden away in her book. It kept floating away from her, just as she was about to pick it up. She'd been on a beach. It was sort of cloudy and cold. It felt sort of wrong….she couldn't explain it, it was just a feeling she couldn't shake. When she'd finally been sure she would pick up the leaf as it landed on the sand, it flew straight up in the air, out of her reach. And she'd seen her. A girl. At least, she thought it was a girl. It was hard to look at her because she was surrounded by an incredibly bright, golden light. It seemed to be coming from something behind her but there was gold in her eyes, around her hair, spilling from her fingertips. She'd felt terrified but she kept looking, needing to know who this was, what this was. She started to walk nearer to the girl when she bolted awake. She didn't know what any of it meant but she was suddenly very thirsty.

Clara stepped out of bed and walked down the hallway, hoping the TARDIS would bring the kitchen closer to get a drink of water as she now realized the rooms shifted. She paused when she saw a door down the hallway to her right cracked open with a strip of light on the floor coming from inside. She started to walk towards it and was about to push it open further when she heard a noise. It sounded somewhat like a cry, like someone in pain who was trying to suppress themselves from crying out. Her heart stopped at the sound and she stood still listening for it to come again. She heard faint noises that she couldn't define so she carefully peered through the opening of the door.

Clara nearly gasped at the sight of the Doctor, sitting on the floor of a bedroom, knees pulled to his chest and head in his hands. He was gripping his hair in frustration in a way she'd never seen him do before. She considered going in, sitting with him, but started when she heard the same gasp of pain from earlier.

The Doctor was crying.

She couldn't see his face but his whole body was wracking with sobs and his knuckles were white from the force with which he was grabbing his hair, making it stick up in all different directions. The Doctor dropped one of his hands to his side, on the floor, and picked up something that was crumpled there. It was a shirt. A girl's blouse with three different shades of purple on it. The Doctor looked down at the shirt and Clara could see his eyes now. He'd been crying for a while. He was holding the shirt so delicately, as if it were fragile, and rubbed the sleeve with his thumb. With his hair so askew and his eyes so red, and his body shaking with silent sobs he looked half-mad and she wanted to go to him but for some reason she knew she shouldn't.

She looked around the room and saw the bed was covered with a pink comforter and it was pulled back and the pink sheets underneath were rumpled as if it had just been slept in. There were more girl's clothes scattered around the room. There were several strange items scattered across a dresser that looked like they were of some alien origin as well as a lot of make-up. Taped to the mirror was a piece of paper with swirly circles on it that she recognized as the same sort of writing that was written on the TARDIS console. On the walls and on a table next to the bed she saw picture frames. Clara could see a young blonde girl that looked to be in her early twenties or late teens standing with a man in a leather jacket who had rather large ears. She was gazing up at him and he was laughing at something. In another picture there was a very good looking young man with a cheeky grin standing in between the blonde girl and the man in the leather jacket. And another that looked like a candid shot of the woman standing next to a tall, very thin man in a pinstriped suit with red trainers in the console room, their backs to the camera, but they were looking at each other, their faces full of pure happiness and their fingers entwined over a control on the console. Clara's eyes widened and she felt her own heart ache with sadness as she realized this had to be Rose's room.

Another sob slipped out of the Doctor and Clara jerked back from the door. She didn't want him to know she was here and she was pretty sure he might not want her to be. This place seemed private, almost sacred. Clara wouldn't go in but she slunk down to sit against the wall and decided to wait for him there until he left. She couldn't leave him alone.

After quite a while when her eyes had started to droop from tiredness, she finally heard him moving around to get ready to go. Her eyes sprang open fully and she darted down a hallway and found the TARDIS had put the door to her room almost immediately around the corner. She dashed inside and when she left her room hours later to go to the console room, Rose's bedroom was nowhere in sight.

After that night, Clara started to wonder even more what had happened to Rose but she didn't ask and the Doctor certainly wasn't telling.

Some nights when she couldn't sleep she would go wandering the halls to see if the Doctor was in the room again but the TARDIS didn't bring the room to her when she was looking. It was only when she had nightmares that she would walk outside and the door would be there again and she would once more wait outside the door until the Doctor left.

The Doctor didn't always cry. Sometimes she thought maybe he wasn't in there at all but she'd peek around the door and he'd just be sitting in there, in her room, on the floor with his head against the bed, looking at the ceiling, totally silent. Other times he'd stand and look at the pictures on the wall for hours. He stared particularly long at one of Rose standing on what looked like a dark beach staring up at two giant waves, frozen in the air, curling towards one another. She had never heard the Doctor be so silent.

Another time Clara saw the Doctor laying on the edge of the bed with a small picture in his hand, looking at the ceiling and smiling and talking. Those times she didn't think she'd ever heard the Doctor talk so much.

"Remember Rose when I first regenerated and I was still in my leather jacket? It didn't fit me right, I was too skinny." He laughed. "Nah, the pinstripe suit was better. Unless I had the ears I looked daft in the leather jacket. I wear bowties now. Bowties are cool. I wonder if you'd like it…You thought I was a Slitheen! And I tried so hard to get you to smile. You didn't admit it but I know you smiled. Not that proper smile you did but you did smile. Oh! And hopping for our lives remember?"

Not much of this made sense to Clara but she would get particularly confused when the Doctor said things like, "Oh I hope he told you about Donna. She was brilliant, she was! We had so many great times. Not like our times of course but they were brilliant. So was Martha. I didn't treat her the best, though, because you'd just —ahhh anyway I suspect he told you about Jack. You probably blame yourself for that but you shouldn't. Especially when you find out who he becomes! It's fantastic. _" Who's "he?"_ she wondered. She'd thought up until now maybe Rose had died but this made it sound like she'd found another man.

Clara noticed the Doctor's voice seemed to change sometimes when he talked to her picture. Sometimes he'd get this sort of Northern accent and other times he sounded positively exuberant and he'd draw certain words out strangely when he'd say things like, "weeelll." It wasn't just his voice though, she realized, he seemed almost like a different person.

She felt bad for hearing some of these stories, as though she were truly intruding on a private conversation but she just felt like she couldn't leave him so she never did.


	3. Chapter 3: The Nightmare

Chapter 3: The Nightmare

Clara awoke with a start again from her dream. She was becoming quite used to it now. It was always the same. Wait. Except…now that she thought about it, this one had been a little bit different. The girl was still there, all that golden light somehow spilling from her and billowing around her at the same time. Then she remembered. The light from behind the girl was rushing out of the TARDIS doors. The girl was standing just outside the TARDIS, doors flung wide open and all that light was surrounding the girl and…inside her, filling her. It was so hard to look at her because the light was so dazzlingly bright but something about it made Clara want to keep looking.

It looked almost like the girl's lips were moving…she was saying something! But when Clara squinted, trying to see the words her lips were forming, the girl looked away. Her golden eyes dimmed just a little and she looked at something just over Clara's shoulder. Clara could sense something there but when she looked there was nothing. She turned to look back at the girl and woke up. This was just getting annoying, she thought.

She heaved a sigh and swung her legs out of bed, letting her feet lead her heavily to her door. She blinked her heavy lids, barely paid attention to where she was going; instead just letting the TARDIS take her to Rose's room when she suddenly felt her feet slap against tile floor. She looked up confusedly and felt around for the light switch on the wall next to her and flipped it on. She jumped when she saw the Doctor sitting at the table in the kitchen of the TARDIS, staring back at her looking just as confused.

"Clara!" the Doctor exclaimed.

"Doctor?"

The Doctor suddenly looked down at Clara, taking in her pyjamas and grinned.

"Why do you have pigs on your pyjamas?" he asked, barely stifling a laugh.

"I-what?" Clara asked, lost and looked down at herself. _Oh. Great_. She was wearing that embarrassing pair of pyjamas Artie had gotten her for Christmas last year with all the baby pigs on it. She blushed, suddenly realizing the Doctor had never seen her in pyjamas before somehow. They'd always managed to avoid seeing each other late at night. She never saw him after she bade him goodnight and went off to bed when they'd get back in the TARDIS, except of course for the times he didn't know about in Rose's room. _How long have I been silent_? she suddenly wondered.

"Well, I wasn't exactly expecting to see anyone," she said frustrated. He just seemed to grin wider at her annoyance.

"Besides you don't exactly look like you're ready to go chasing down any Cybermen," she said eyeing him in his flannel pyjama pants and messed up hair. She smirked as he quickly looked down at himself and she registered the fact he wasn't wearing a shirt and quickly tore her eyes away and attempted to look anywhere else.

The Doctor looked up, suddenly looking self-conscious. She noticed his hands started fidgeting. He got so easily flustered. If it wasn't the Doctor, she'd say it was cute.

"Well I'm not gonna wear my suit to bed, am I?" he said indignantly.

Clara smirked again. "Well, I thought maybe you'd at least have one of those t-shirts with a fake bowtie printed on it."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows in interest. "They have those?"

She just grinned. "So why are you up, anyway?"

"Well, I was just uh, I- well I couldn't sleep and like you say, I wasn't expecting to see anyone," he said in a rush. Clara's smirk vanished.

"Why couldn't you sleep?" she asked.

"Ah- I don't know. I'm a Time Lord and we already don't sleep much anyways. 'Guess I didn't need to tonight, like I thought," he said slowly.

"Oh," she said tentatively, taking in the circles under his eyes. From what she could tell with how often she'd been by Rose's room lately, he hadn't slept in a long time. "Is that all?"

The Doctor looked away from her face and said with a false casualness in his voice, "Well, I suppose I might've had a nightmare or something, now that I think about it."

"Oh?" she asked.

"Maybe," he asserted.

"Do you…remember it?" she asked and crossed to the cabinets and got down two mugs to begin making them some tea.

"Umm, not really, no," he said hesitantly. Then with a forced laugh, "Obviously not, if I'm not even sure I had one."

Clara forced her own laugh. "'Suppose that's true," she said trying to sound cheerful. He stayed silent while she made them their tea and she prattled on about some sort of nonsense story from before she'd met him to make him more comfortable, barely paying attention to what she was saying. She wondered if he'd really had a nightmare and if it had been about Rose. Or maybe he'd been in her room again, but if that were the case, why hadn't the TARDIS taken her there earlier? She assumed it was the TARDIS waking her up when he was in Rose's room. She could almost sense it in her mind. What had changed?

Clara walked over to the table and placed the cup of tea in front of him. He looked lost in thought and almost without thinking, she placed her hand on his to comfort him. The Doctor's head whipped up and she nearly withdrew her hand but he grabbed it, gave it a squeeze and smiled. She smiled back and let go to grab her own mug from the counter.

The Doctor cleared his throat and said suddenly, "Rose used to do this." Clara froze halfway between the counter and the table. When he didn't continue, she prompted,

"Do what?"

"She used to come in the kitchen when I'd had a nightmare and make me a cup of tea. She did it quite a lot actually." He paused and frowned. "It was weird…it was like she always knew when I'd had a nightmare. I'd come in here and just a few minutes later, she'd come wandering in, asking me what was wrong. Sort of like you just did," he added with a sudden smile at Clara, looking amused. She returned the smile.

"Sounds like she knew you really well," she said trying to sound normal but really choosing every word with caution. She didn't know how long he'd be opened up like this.

"Yes, she really did," he said still smiling. He felt all the nights flooding back to him when he would wake up shaking, hearts hammering, from a nightmare about the Time War, the Daleks' screams still ringing in his ear. Then he'd find himself walking to Rose's door and before he could even move, she would open the door and lead him in, soothing him with hushed tones and gentle hands up and down his back. She'd take him to her bed and let him hold her until they both fell asleep. His breath hitched and his eyes stung and he looked down at his hands which had started to tremble.

"What was she like?" Clara asked, still not moving, not wanting to break this spell of honesty.

The Doctor suddenly saw his Rose's face flash before his eyes, her glowing, laughing face and his smile grew wide again. He kept his eyes on his clasped hands on the table as he said, "She…well she was brilliant really. Absolutely fantastic." Again Clara heard that slightly Northern accent. "She was so….human," he continued, and for once his fidgeting hands were steady. "She was kind…to everyone. She had just this, enormous compassion for people. It was incredible. She was brave, so brave, and so very funny," he said with a laugh. "She could be rather cheeky, and she had this smile that-" he broke off, his own smile fading.

He didn't know why but the Doctor found himself wanting to talk about Rose. He wanted to tell Clara all about his beautiful Rose and about how the first time he met her she saved his life in more ways than one…and how she could be so stubborn, like that time with Gwen and he'd been such an idiot and called her a stupid ape….and how she defended him to Mickey and Jackie….how she'd killed all the Daleks at the game station just for him….how she'd taken the heart of the TARDIS into herself just to save him….and how he'd died for her….and been born out of his love for her…how he had been so happy when they travelled together in his new regeneration that he could barely contain himself…about the times they went back to the Powell Estate for tea with her mum and how he pretended to hate it but how it felt like his only home besides the TARDIS….how he'd lost her…how she found him again…but he couldn't. He was the Doctor…so he talked, about anything besides what he was thinking.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I thought I met a future regeneration of myself?" he said suddenly. Clara blinked in confusion at the sudden change of subject.

"No..?" she said.

"Weird situation, that was. I met a bloke who thought he was me! That involved the Cybermen actually," he said his tone already changing to a false brightness.

Clara froze. She didn't know whether it would be better to push him into talking more about Rose or go along with the change of subject. She felt a slight prodding in her mind that she vaguely considered might be from the TARDIS and made a decision in that moment. She walked back to the table, sat down in the chair next to him and laid her hand on his.

"Doctor, you don't have to tell me what happened to her, or tell me anything really, but if you want to, I'll be here to listen," she said quietly. She felt something break between them. She felt herself cross a line they'd only toed around before. They mainly stuck to light conversations and teasing each other and any suggestion of personal conversations were about her. In that one sentence, she was holding her hand out to him, offering something deeper, and she just hoped he wouldn't turn and run away.

What felt like hours of silence hung in the air before the Doctor finally spoke. "I-" he started to say in an extremely quiet voice, when suddenly the whole room lurched and the TARDIS seemed to halt to a stop as it crashed into something.

"What the-?" the Doctor yelped, jumping up from the table, letting go of Clara's hand. The TARDIS flung itself in the opposite direction to balance out, sending Clara careening out of her chair and the Doctor stooped to grab her. He pulled her up on her unsteady feet and suddenly it wasn't her. It was Rose in that purple shirt and the whole New Earth hospital disappeared around him and his whole reality was her as her eyes cleared and she looked up at him,

_"Hello." Her face broke into a grin that made his knees want to buckle and he felt his face melt into a similar expression of happiness and heard the relief as he as replied in a voice that was no longer his,___

_"Hello."__  
_  
The Doctor jerked back from Clara and backed up against the counter, running his hands over his face.

"Doctor, what is it?" Clara asked worried.

The Doctor was about to brush her off again, try to convince her everything was completely alright and hurtle off into their next adventure but then he looked in her eyes and he didn't. He saw an empathy there, a yearning to understand him, to help him, and there was something else there too that he couldn't quite identify and he felt a warmth spread slowly through his chest.

The TARDIS suddenly shook again, and the Doctor having forgotten about all the turbulence only barely managed to keep himself from falling. He huffed in frustration.

He looked up at the ceiling of the TARDIS and said, "This is just really annoying!" Then he looked at Clara once more and grinned widely at her. _Maybe_, he thought. _Maybe I will tell her_. He held out his hand to her and nodded his head toward the console room.

"Wanna see what the trouble is?" he asked still smiling broadly.

She smirked at him, grabbed his hand and said, "Geronimo."

"Oi! That's my word, don't use my word!" he exclaimed and started leading her out of the kitchen.

"Right, like you invented the word 'Geronimo,'" she said sarcastically as they entered the console room.

He let go of her hand to walk over to the console.

"Well, actually-" he began, throwing her a mischievous grin over his shoulder but promptly stopped when he saw Clara's expression.

She was frozen where he'd left her, a confused look on her face, staring at the TARDIS doors.

"Clara...what's wrong," he asked slowly.

"I don't know," she said uncertainly. "It's like I…felt something when I looked at the doors."

"Felt what?"

"I'm not sure," she said, shutting her eyes as if trying to remember something, "it was like a sort of…poking in my mind or something."

The Doctor glanced at the console quickly and then back at Clara_. Was it the TARDIS? It must be. Why was it going in her head this way? It should only be doing that to translate languages for her._ He quickly pulled out his sonic screwdriver, walked over to her and scanned her with it. She barely seemed to notice, gazing at the doors in concentration again. He frowned at his screwdriver. No strange readings. The TARDIS presence was there but didn't seem to be any more than usual. He walked back to the console and checked their location. They were in the Vortex still. But wait. The Doctor pulled the screen back toward him. A few minutes ago when they'd seemingly crashed, they'd been somewhere. He punched several buttons but it would not show him the location they'd just been in. Something strange was going on. He turned around and walked back over to Clara.

"Clara?" he asked, putting his hands on her arms.

She looked at him and blinked several times, seeming to come back to herself. "Sorry," she said, "it's probably nothing. 'Probably just remembering my nightmare."

"Nightmare?" he asked his brows furrowing. He suddenly realized he hadn't asked why she was up in the middle of the night. _Still rude_, he thought. _Still rude and most definitely not ginger_. He shook himself, trying to focus. She still hadn't answered him.

"What nightmare?" he prompted.

Clara hesitated. She didn't want him to know she'd been having a lot of nightmares. _What if he assumed she'd been getting up in the middle of the night and figured out she might have seen him in Rose's room. Just relax and watch what you say_, she told herself.

"Uh, yeah, just a nightmare I've been having the past couple of nights," she lied. She felt a strange push in her mind again but ignored it.

"What sort of nightmare?" he asked intently.  
She looked at him in confusion. _It was just a nightmare, why did it matter_?

"Uh, well I'm standing on a beach. It's sort of rocky and really cold. Um, you know the leaf that I keep in my book?" He nods. "Well I'm trying to catch it but it keeps floating away from me. I keep walking further down the beach but then eventually as I'm about to pick it up, it flies away and I forget about it because then I see this girl." She stops. "Is this important?" she asked confusedly.

"It might be. Go on," he says, urgency creeping into his voice now.

"But I thought we landed somewhere," Clara says.

He waves his hands impatiently. "We're fine. We're in the Vortex. Just go on with your dream," he says.

"Okay…," she says still not understanding. She felt like she was missing something. "Well, like I said, there's this girl standing there on the beach…in front of the TARDIS."

"What sort of girl?"

"A human girl. She's…blonde," Clara says slowly and then she gasps loudly and claps a hand to her mouth. She could suddenly see the girl so clearly in her mind. If she took away all of that glow, all of that light, she thought she could see the same woman she saw in the pictures in Rose's room. Was she seeing Rose?

The Doctor barely noticed her gasp and stumbled back several steps. All sound and everything around him seeming to disappear as he heard another familiar voice inside his head that brought a painful spark to his chest.

_She was…blonde.___

_Donna what was her name?!___

_She said two words.___

_What two words, Donna, what was her name?!__  
_…

_Calm down, calm down, _he thought_. Everything's fine. She can't be reaching out to you again. The walls to that universe are closed.__  
_  
He suddenly sprang back to Clara and grabbed her arms more intensely than he meant to. She jerked in surprise.

"Sorry," he said immediately, loosening his grip. "Tell me about the girl, Clara. Please."

She nodded, not willing to say she thought the girl was Rose though, unless she was sure. And even if she was, it couldn't mean anything. It was just a dream.

"Okay, well the girl has sort of longish, blonde, wavy hair….and she's standing in front of the TARDIS. The doors are open and there's all this light spilling out of it…this golden light." She felt the Doctor's fingers tighten on her arms again. She continued, "The light is coming from the TARDIS I think but it's also like it's coming out of her. It's in her eyes and her fingers and…she's saying something-"

"Saying what?!" the Doctor urged, all attempts at maintaining calm forgotten.

"I don't know. I can never hear her. In my dream tonight though, the girl's eyes got less…glowy I guess and she was looking over my shoulder at something but I couldn't see what it was-"

Before she could continue, the Doctor suddenly let go of her arms and spun back around and rushed over to the console.

"Doctor, what's going on?!" Clara asked, full-on worried now.

"I don't know, Clara. I don't know, I don't know," he said, anxiously. "I just don't understand."

She walked over to the console to stand next to him. "Well, obviously, this means something to you based on how you're reacting. What does this have to do with my dream?" she asked.

The Doctor didn't look at her.

"Doctor, talk to me!" she yelled and slapped her hand on the console. Suddenly the TARDIS lurched forward again, knocking both the Doctor and Clara to the ground. Clara hardly noticed, however, as she clutched her head, screaming. All at once, she became completely unaware of where she was. All she saw was that beach, the girl, the TARDIS, and then suddenly she was covering her ears over the words coming so loudly and clearly from the girl's mouth now. From Rose's mouth.

_I am the Bad Wolf._

Clara squinted up at Rose and saw she was looking at something over Clara's shoulder again. Clara looked over her shoulder and saw a man there. The same man from the pictures in Rose's room. Leather jacket, piercing blue eyes, big ears. He was leaning back on the floor, looking up at the girl in fear, confusion, and complete awe. Clara blinked and suddenly it was a different man but in the exact same location and position as the previous man had been. He was another one from the pictures in Rose's room. A pinstripe suit and trainers. Lean body and wild hair. Clara blinked again and suddenly the Doctor was there. Brown suit, hair mussed, bow tie askew. She closed her eyes and shook her head to clear it…had she hit her head when she fell? She felt the TARDIS continue to jerk in all directions and shiver and shake and make extremely loud noises before finally crashing to a stop.

When she opened her eyes, the beach was gone, the girl was nowhere to be seen and the Doctor was sprawled on the floor of the TARDIS, although he was in the same position as he had been a moment ago in her…dream…vision…whatever that was.

"Doctor?" Clara asked, sitting up.

The Doctor sprang up and pulled the screen towards him. He froze.

"This is impossible," he whispered. Then he began clicking wildly at dozens of buttons on the console, his fingers whizzing over switches.

"Doctor! What is going on?" Clara asked more loudly.

Still not answering her, the Doctor bolted to the TARDIS doors and flung them open with shaking hands. Light streamed in from outside and he blinked his eyes but dashed outside anyway.

He didn't hear Clara come out behind him. He didn't the sounds of kids playing in the street. He didn't even hear the roar of the zeppelin engines as they floated by in the clouds above his head. In that moment, the only things the Doctor could hear were his two hearts beating madly against his chest and a beautiful, ringing song in his mind along with a third heartbeat, both of which he hadn't heard in so long and thought that he would never hear again.

The Doctor heard his connection with Rose Tyler.


	4. Chapter 4: More Than Anything

Chapter 4: More Than Anything

He heard it like a whisper leading him home. How much he wanted to follow it.

Clara walked up next to him and looked around her in confusion. They seemed to be on a relatively empty city street of what looked like London. Except it wasn't London. Something about this place was distinctly not London.

"Doctor! Where are we?" she asked shaking his arm until he finally looked at her. It was his turn to take in his surroundings. _Well, at least we aren't on that damn beach again_, he thought.

"We're, uh…well we seem to be in a parallel universe," he said tentatively.

"There's a parallel universe?" she asked, absentmindedly wondering why she found this so surprising.

"Yes," he said nodding curtly.

"Why are we here?" she asked.

"How should I know?" he said distractedly. He clenched his hands into fists to stop them from shaking. Clara noticed.

"Doctor, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he said, sounding agitated. The song in his head was making his hearts ache.

Clara sighed in exasperation. "You aren't telling me something. What's going on?"

"I don't know!" he said too loudly, spinning to face her. She just arched an eyebrow.

"You know you're a terrible liar?" she said.

The Doctor shot her an annoyed glance but said nothing.

"Well if this place is so unimportant, why don't we just leave?" she pressed. That should get him, she thought.

"Who said it was unimportant?!"

"So it is important?" she asked with a coy smile. He nodded slightly.

"How important?" she asked.

The Doctor looked at the ground. "Very."

Clara stood in front of him and crossed her arms. "Tell me," she said firmly.

The Doctor crossed his own arms. "This is the universe where I left Rose," he said finally.

"She's alive?!"

"Yes, of course she's alive!" he said sounding irritated.

"Well how would I know?" she snapped back. Again he said nothing.

"You left her here?" she asked quietly. He took his eyes off her. "Why'd you do that?"

"I didn't want to! It's more complicated than you think!" he flared.

"Well, why don't you explain it to me then?" she challenged.

"Not now, Clara," he said turning away and running his hand through his hair.

"Wait…" Clara began slowly. "Doctor….is Rose still here?" The Doctor froze but stayed silent.

"She's still here, isn't she?"

"Yes," he replied simply.

Clara walked around to stand in front of him again. "Then, Doctor, why are we still standing here?"

"It's more complicated than you think," he said, fidgeting with his hands again.

Clara rolled her eyes. "Oh, is it?"

"Yes, it is!"

"Well, of course it is, Doctor. It's you," Clara said matter-of-factly. The Doctor gave her a small smile and half-nodded.

Clara walked up to him and grabbed his arms. "Let me un-complicate this for you. Do you love her?"

The Doctor jumped a little in response. _Could he tell Clara that? He suddenly found that he wanted to. _

"More than anything," he answered. Clara nodded.

"Do you want to see her?" The Doctor thought for a moment. A thousand complications and questions flitted through his mind. _What if she doesn't want to see me? What if she hates me for leaving her? What if he's there? I don't really want to see him. He gets to hold her and be with her_. Clara watched patiently and could practically see the wheels spinning in his head. She could almost see where they stopped turning.

On top of everything and under everything and in everything, the Doctor saw Rose and he knew there was no real question. He'd never pass in any life on a chance to see Rose Tyler. So he repeated firmly,

"More than anything." Clara grinned and nodded.

"Well then Doctor…let's go," she said nudging his arm. He grinned at her and grabbed her hand. _You can do this. You can do this. You can do this. You're going to see Rose Tyler_.

…

Clara shifted in her seat on the zeppelin until she was angled towards the Doctor. She'd managed to make him board a zeppelin and had watched with sympathy and amusement as he tried to figure out how to get them to their destination, muttering about primitive human travelling.

He was bouncing his legs furiously and looking around the vehicle every few seconds. Just watching him made her nervous. She put her hand on his arm to stop him from bouncing. He looked up at her and smiled sheepishly.

"You alright?" she asked.

"Yes, of course," he replied with false confidence.

"H-how long has it been since you saw her?" she asked him.

"A long time," he answered.

"What happened?" she asked hesitantly. "You said you left her but…,"

"I lost her," he said.

"How?"

The Doctor took a steadying breath and looked around him. "Clara, do we really have to talk about this now?"

"No," she said. "But maybe it would help."

"I don't see how," he said irritably, looking out the window. Clara turned away from him, deciding not to push it.

The Doctor looked down at Clara's hand still on his arm and felt a rush of affection toward his companion. _Why are you pushing her away_? He thought. He snorted to himself. _You push everyone away. You pushed Rose away. No. Stop. This is not the time for that_.

"She got trapped here," he said suddenly. _What are you doing?!_

Clara looked up in surprise.

"There was this… battle," he said slowly. _Was he really doing this?_

"What happened?"

"There was an opening in this universe and Daleks and Cybermen were leaking through into our universe and…." He said all this very quickly, suddenly shutting his eyes to the images starting to flash in his mind. Clara grabbed his hand. He continued in a shaky voice,

"And…we found a way to send the Daleks and the Cybermen back through the Void…this thing that's between universes where nothing exists…no time, no space, just nothing, and we were trying to close the gaps between universes and this lever…this damn lever that was keeping the Void open for the Daleks and the Cybermen to fall into, slipped and Rose tried to pull it and she…she….the Void was pulling her and I saw that she was slipping…and I was just screaming at her….to hold on…and I reached for her and I tried….I tried…I…and…she let go and I wanted to let go…I wanted to get her…even if….but I couldn't. I just couldn't! I'm the last and maybe I'm a coward, I don't know but I couldn't! She was about to fall through and the parallel version of her dad used this universe-jumping device to grab her and then he…they came here." His whole body was shaking now. He couldn't tell her the rest. He couldn't tell her about the beach.

He could tell Clara expected him to break down completely but he wouldn't. He wouldn't let himself. He forced himself not to look at her, took a deep breath, and tried to go on in a calm, factual manner. Like he was talking about someone else's life. Someone else's loss.

Clara just squeezed his hand tighter, waiting for him to go on.

"She was gone for a while and…I didn't think I would ever see her again. There was no way. I would've…but she built this thing…a dimension cannon and she jumped through different universes until she found ours. She came to warn me about the darkness. About how the stars were going out. She found me." He gripped the seat below him to maintain some grasp on reality. Anything to keep from remembering the way she ran towards him on that street.

"She sounds…amazing," Clara said. She tried to ignore the tiny prick of jealousy she felt at the reverent look on the Doctor's face as he talked about Rose. You're not here to compete with anyone. You're here to see the stars and help the Doctor, she scolded herself. He doesn't feel that way about you.

"She is," the Doctor agreed a wistful smile on his face.

"If she found you, how'd she end up back here?" The Doctor's smile quickly disappeared.

"Well…I got shot by a Dalek," he said slowly. "I was dying but um…well, when I first regenerated into my last self, I lost my hand and regrew a new one but I kept the old one on the TARDIS." He looked at Clara for her reaction.

Clara arched an eyebrow, looking amused. "That's not even a little surprising," she said. "I've known you too long."

The Doctor laughed. She's so brilliant. He felt his familiar embarrassment and knew he was about to become flustered. This is a really annoying habit this regeneration has I could live without…

"Keep going," she said waving her hand to prompt him.

"I was going to regenerate but I sort of redirected all that energy into my hand. Then my friend Donna-" he stopped. He took a breath and restarted. "My friend Donna touched the container my hand was in and her DNA mixed with my DNA in the hand and an instantaneous biological metacrisis happened.

"A what?"

"A biological metacrisis. Another me grew from my hand. Well, sort of another me. He was part human but he looked just like me and had all my thoughts, memories, feelings…everything." He looked at Clara and raised an eyebrow. "Is that surprising?"

"A little," she admitted smiling. "So another you grew from your hand but he was part human?"

"Yes."

"Well…?"

"So that version of me could age. Like a human."

Clara's eyes widened in realization. "You let him stay with her." It wasn't a question.

"I just gave her the life she deserved," he replied. He swallowed against the lump in his throat. He could never regret his choice but it would never stop hurting.

"But what about you?" Clara asked softly.

"Me? I just keep running. Same old life," he said looking down at her and trying to smile.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Oh, I'm alright. I've got you," he said squeezing her hand. Clara squeezed back and laid her head on his shoulder. The Doctor smiled to himself and relaxed. She didn't ask him any more questions and for that he was very grateful.

…

Both too quickly and not soon enough, the Doctor was standing at the end of Rose's street. All he had to do was follow the voice in his head like a compass to lead the zeppelin in the right direction, until here he was...mere feet from Rose Tyler's home. A home that wasn't the TARDIS and wasn't even the Powell Estate. He was pretty sure his hearts had never raced this fast.

Clara walked up next to him and crossed her arms.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"I don't know," he replied honestly. "I mean…I…" he looked down at his feet.

"What are you going to say?" Clara asked.

"I don't know," he repeated.

"What do you want to say?"

That I love her. "I…I'm not sure."

Clara raised an eyebrow at him skeptically.

"Well, what should I say?" he wondered.

Clara considered. "Whatever you want her to know."

"It's more –" he began.

"If you say it's more complicated than that, I'm going to slap you," Clara cut him off. The Doctor frowned and quickly closed his mouth. She gave him a small smile, wrapped her hands around his arm and made him look at her.

"Doctor, just go see her," she said. He nodded, steeling himself.

"Hang on…where are you gonna go?" he asked suddenly.

"I'm going to go back to the TARDIS and wait," she said.

"Why'd you travel all the way here with me then if you're just going to ride back to the TARDIS? You didn't have to come."

Clara quirked an eyebrow at him. "Because we're friends, Doctor. And I'm just that nice," she added cheekily. The Doctor grinned.

"Are you sure you don't want to…?" he offered awkwardly gesturing at the end of the street.

"I'm sure," she said. Then she nudged him further down the street. "Go."

The Doctor took in a huge breath and walked until he reached a house at the end of the street where the song in his head reached its loudest.

He looked up at the house in front of him and couldn't help but smile. It was by far the most unique house on the street. It was rather tall and skinny and painted a color as close to TARDIS blue as you could get. Through the curtained front windows he could see straight through to the back of the house where large window stretched out from floor to ceiling. The windows looked out into a huge backyard. The house was on the edge of a town, so past their yard it looked like all the buildings and the lights and the noise in this world just stopped. A new world started where their house ended.

The Doctor blinked in surprise when he realized his feet had brought him to the front door. He raised his shaking hand to ring the doorbell. You were wrong about your hearts never having beaten this fast, he thought. Then he pulled back with a gasp when he heard her voice,

"You lot better clean this up!"

Someone somewhere in the house answered her but he barely registered it.

At the sound of her voice, his hearts stopped and he felt like his knees were going to give out under him. It was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard and hearing it again made him impossibly sad and thrilled at the same time. He sucked in a breath. He missed that voice as much as he missed the sound of the TARDIS when he was separated from her.

The Doctor steadied his breathing one more time and rang the doorbell. The Doctor's hearts stopped beating and his racing Time Lord mind stopped functioning and he was pretty sure time itself had ceased as he heard footsteps and saw the turn of the doorknob.

And then there was Rose.

She smiled at him in a friendly way but without any recognition and he thought he might die and regenerate again on the spot from the pain of it.

"Hello," she said.

"Hello, Rose Tyler," the Doctor answered.


	5. Chapter 5: Just Different

The way those unfamiliar lips curled so familiarly around her name gave Rose no doubt as to who this man was. Her heart froze in her chest nonetheless.

"Hello, Doctor," she replied with a smile of disbelief.

_She knows me_, he thought. He suddenly felt so happy he thought the magnitude of his smile would break his rather large chin.

"Hello," he repeated. He took a step forward but froze. Rose needed no invitation and flung herself into the Doctor's arms and hugged him tightly. She felt his whole body relax into hers as he wrapped his arms around her.

"Rose," he practically whispered. Rose grinned softly into the shoulder of his jacket. _He almost smells the same, _she thought to herself. _Almost._

"Wotcha," she said. He chuckled softly at her familiar greeting. Rose pulled back from him to look at his face and he resisted tightening his arms around her to keep her against him. She peered up at his face and the Doctor suddenly felt very nervous. It was almost the same sort of feeling as when he'd first regenerated in front of her. He'd hoped so very much that she'd like his new face. Love it, even. Now it didn't really matter what she thought of his face, he supposed. She had her Doctor.

Rose smiled shyly. "You look so different," she said. She knew what he would say but badly wanted to hear his answer anyway.

The Doctor smiled back shyly and replied, "Good different or bad different?"

Rose's smile widened. "Just…different." Then suddenly she was smiling that way that was burned into his mind forever. That adorable tongue-in-teeth smile. Any clever response he was about to say was wiped from memory. The Doctor thought he felt his hearts melt to liquid at the sight.

"Still not ginger, I notice," she said when he didn't respond.

The Doctor sighed in exasperation. "Don't I know it? Eleventh regeneration and still never been ginger!"

"The indignity of it all," she said cheekily shaking her head. All at once she looked just like her nineteen year old self again.

Feeling more confident now, the Doctor tugged on his jacket and gestured to himself saying, "So…what do you think?"

Rose put a finger to her chin in mock consideration, sizing him up. "Well…you look younger," she said. '"Bit unfair seeing as I just get older."

"You look beautiful," he gushed out quickly. For a moment he could be big ears and leather jacket again. He felt that familiar need to draw back again at his honesty. Then she smiled and he didn't care how he'd said it.

"How long has it been for you since you saw me?" she asked.

The Doctor fixed Rose with a serious gaze. "Too long," he answered seriously. "Much, much too long." The Doctor saw the corners of Rose's mouth twitch. "How long has it been for you?"

"Five years," she replied.

"Blimey," he muttered sadly, running a hand through his hair. Rose nodded.

"Miss me?" she asked suddenly.

"Always," he assured her, nodding fervently. He wanted to tell her how much. He wanted to tell her how he's kept her room the same. How all of their souvenirs and memories from their trips together are still stowed away in her room. How he goes in there on the nights when missing her becomes too much. How he still goes there when he has a nightmare even though she's not there to invite him into her bed so he can hold her until he feels safe again.

Rose reached out tentatively to touch his face. He leaned forward ever so slightly until her fingers rested on his cheek. She opened her mouth to say something when the Doctor saw a figure at the still open door behind her. A very small figure. Rose followed his gaze until her eyes rested on the toddler behind her. Rose rushed back to pick the child up and closed the door behind her.

"Rose…are you a mum?" asked the Doctor softly.

"Yes," she said. "This is Jamie."

The Doctor felt a jolt of happiness and pain. It was like a huge sign signaling her life was moving forward, which he was happy about. But it was a life without him.

"You named him Jamie?" he asked gently? "After –" he began.

"Yes," she finished with a small smile.

The Doctor laughed and took in the child fully with his eyes. He was very thin but had plump rosy cheeks with a dimple on one side that showed when he laid eyes on his mum. He had Rose's honey-brown eyes and he had quite a lot of hair that was tousled in a familiar way. Hair that was unbelievably….ginger.

The Doctor hardly knew what to say so he chose,

"He's ginger!"

Rose laughed. "Yes he is."

The Doctor grinned kindly at the little boy. "Good on you mate." Jamie grinned shyly at him and tucked his face into Rose's shoulder.

"How old is he?"

"Just a little over one year old," she answered.

"That's a lot of hair!" he exclaimed grinning even wider.

"Oh, I know," Rose said ruffling his hair.

The Doctor looked back at the closed front door. "Do you have other -?"

"No," she replied. The Doctor just nodded in response.

Rose shifted Jamie on her hip and nodded towards the door. "Do you want to come in?"

The Doctor hesitated. Did he? He wanted to spend as much time with Rose as possible and he was decidedly happy to meet Jamie but seeing the inside of her house…the other details of Rose's life without him and especially seeing his other self with her….he didn't think he could bear it. He grappled in his mind for a suitable excuse to refuse.

"Or we could go somewhere else," she supplied.

The Doctor practically sighed in relief. "Uh, yes, that would be…" he said nervously.

"Fantastic?" she finished with her smile.

The Doctor laughed and nodded.

"Let me just go give him to…" Rose began but turned and went inside rather than finish the sentence.

The Doctor waited outside in the chilly afternoon air that was quickly becoming cloudy and felt his nerves returning full force. _Where do I take her? I don't know this universe! Would she want to go on a ride in the TARDIS? _But he knew if he did that he might not be able to bring himself to bring her back. He fiddled with his hands nervously then began raking his hands through his hair.

Rose opened the door again, pulling a black leather jacket on that looked achingly familiar and grinned at him excitedly. "So….ready to go?" she asked.

"Where?" the Doctor asked barely registering what she was saying as he watched her in that jacket.

"To get chips!" she said as if this were obvious.

The Doctor broke into his biggest smile yet. "Of course!" Rose grinned at him again with her tongue in her teeth and he was pretty sure he'd just shown her the end of the world and she'd just called him a tight wad.

"Got money this time?" she asked walking towards him.

"Nope," he replied happily.

She clucked her tongue. "Typical." She was right next to him now and it was all the Doctor could do not to grab her and kiss her.

Then it started to rain.

The Doctor jumped as the cold droplets hit his face. "Want to get a cab? Or a zeppelin?" he added ruefully. He really didn't like that form of travel, he decided.

"Nah," Rose said. She slipped her hand into his and the Doctor clutched it reflexively. "Let's run!"


	6. Chapter 6: Utterly Human

Rose and the Doctor dashed into the chippy. The Doctor wagged his head to shake off the water like he used to do in his last body. He tried not to stare as Rose smoothed the wet hair back from her face. Her cheeks were flushed from running and she still had his hand in hers. He tightened his fingers, afraid she'd let go now that they were inside.

A waitress showed them to a booth and after she took their orders, he let himself revel in the familiarity of sitting across from Rose Tyler, getting chips. He looked down at her hands folded together on the table, trying to make it appear as though he hadn't noticed the silver band on her left ring finger earlier.

"So you and," he paused deciding the appropriate pronoun to use, "….him are married, then?"

She smoothed a finger over her ring and smiled. "Yeah."

He nodded feeling his hearts both swell at the joy on her face and form tiny painful cracks around the edges. He cleared his throat, "I'm-"

"-so that means part of you is married to me then, yeah?" she said. The Doctor dropped the fork he'd been fiddling with and looked up to see her giggling, tongue caught between her teeth. He pointed slightly to himself as if asking "_Me _me?" He thought he saw the faintest nod before her cell phone buzzed and she picked it up. He felt the cracks around his hearts begin to lessen and smiled to himself.

She rolled her eyes at whatever was on her phone.

"Torchwood?" asked the Doctor. "That is, if you still work there."

She looked up, seeming surprised he remembered. He hoped she knew the way his half-human counterpart felt about her better than she seemed to know the way this him does. Then again, he realized, he's the one that got to _tell_ her how he felt.

"No actually, although I do work there, the Doctor -," she broke off, seeming unsure as to whether she should continue.

The Doctor gave a small smile. Always so much compassion for him. "You can talk about him. I want…I want to hear about….your life," he said but in his mind he said "our life." He knew it would hurt later but for one moment, one selfish moment, he wanted to picture himself in this life of hers.

"What..um –" he stopped, suddenly embarrassed.

"Well go on," she nudged his arm gently with a comforting smile.

"Did we…um..have a wedding?" he finally asked. _Oh well, might as well go with the 'we' thing. _

"Yep," she said brightly. "A proper, human-y wedding, mum made sure of that."

"How very….domestic," he said teasingly.

Rose laughed, "It was! Except there _was_ a minor alien attack halfway through the reception so we had to run off. It was very us," she said smiling at the memory. "You even wore a bowtie," she added winking at him.

The Doctor sniffed in approval and adjusted his own bowtie. "Bow ties are cool." A question flashed in his mind, a sudden burning question he felt he had to ask. Without thinking, he blurted,

"Are we…are we good together? Being a married couple?" He nearly flinched at how strange that sounded. Still, not a bad flinch.

Rose smiled at him warmly. "Us? Oh, we're the stuff of legend."

The Doctor felt a lump in his throat. "Tell me more," he said softly.

She looked up at him, caution in her eyes.

"Well….we both work for Torchwood. You joined _my _team. Jake's on it! Remember him?"

The Doctor nodded.

"And guess who one of our consultants is?"

"Who?"

"Sarah Jane Smith!" she replied excitedly.

"Really? There's a parallel Sarah? That's brilliant!"

Rose nodded enthusiastically. "She's just as brilliant as the other one!"

"Anyone else I know on your team?"

"No, there was Mickey but…"

"Oh, right," he said. "I know what happened to him…if you want to know."

Rose's head shot up. "Yes!"

"He joined UNIT and married….ready for this?…..Martha Jones!"

Rose opened her mouth in shock. "Really?!" she cried excitedly.

"Yes."

"Good for him! I liked her. Oh, I'm so glad," she said biting her lip and smiling.

The Doctor almost wished she'd say Mickey deserved better again so he could tell her otherwise like he'd been too afraid to do the first time, but she didn't. _Plus_, he reminded himself, _that's something her Doctor should do…not you. _

"How about the TARDIS coral I gave you? Has that grown yet?"

Rose nodded. "The Doctor got it to finish about two years ago. It's a lot like it used to be. Although, we don't travel quite as often now that we've got Jamie. We've got to be more careful though…'can't risk as much. We're really excited to take Jamie when he's old enough."

The Doctor encouraged her to go on and listened to all that she'd done since he last saw her. He could see it so clearly; everything they'd lived, and everything they'd ever do, the way he saw John Smith's whole life in 1913. Just another one he couldn't live. Except this was worse because this life had Rose. The Doctor shook himself and tried to refocus on what Rose was saying but she had stopped talking and was watching him closely. He knew she saw the pain he was trying to conceal in his eyes. New body or not, he could tell it wasn't working. She was still Rose and she could read him like a book.

"So, go on! Tell me about your life!" she said with an encouraging smile. And that's what he did. He told her all about the glorious Ponds. She laughed a lot when he told her stories of how he would get caught in between Amy and Rory's bickering. "You brought the domestics on board, Doctor!" she said giggling.

When he mentioned River Song, she nodded explaining what she knew from when her Doctor met her in the library.

"Do you love her?" Rose asked.

"No, not like-" he paused and only finished in his head with '_you._' "I care about her but I only know about what happened to her because of what she's told me. I haven't…had…felt the things she has because I haven't lived them. Well I mean I have, but _I _haven't. Maybe I will one day, I don't know," he shrugged looking down at the table.

Rose just nodded, understandingly.

The Doctor again had the urge to blurt what was on his mind, well one of the things that was on his mind, "It's not what –" he broke off again, suddenly looking up at her but stopping himself and she flushed. She was _so _beautiful. Just the way he remembered. Suddenly he reached across the table and grabbed her hand before thinking better of it. Sure they'd held hands on the way here but they always did. Grabbing it across the table like this…that was what couples did and he hadn't done that since…well…

"Sorry," he said but he didn't pull his hand away, though he was afraid that's what she wanted. She saw the concern in his eyes and smiled comfortingly and squeezed his hand.

"The Doctor and Rose Tyler holding hands, never questioned it before," she said reassuringly. He felt the lump in his throat again and coughed to make it go away and felt his fingers twitch in her hand. He went on to tell her how his adventures with the Ponds ended. The Doctor saw tears in Rose's eyes and she gripped his hand harder and rubbed her thumb over his, the way she had so many times with his other regenerations' hands and he felt a shiver go up his spine.

When he finished telling her, she said, "I'm so sorry, Doctor."

"Oh don't be sorry for me, Rose Tyler," he started to say with false brightness in his voice but he stopped when she looked at him and just let her hold his hand longer.

"I don't want you to be alone, Doctor," Rose said eventually breaking the silence.

"I have another companion, I'm not alone," he said flippantly, waving away her worries with his free hand.

"No, Doctor, I mean," she sighed, "moving on with half-human you from you was really difficult…for both of us. I knew he was you but you were still out there and…anyway, I'm so _grateful _for what you gave me. I can have this life because of you and I will always love you Doctor –

The Doctor's hearts completely stopped in his chest at her words. _She still loved him. She said always._

-but I love him too so much and –"

"- you moved on," he finished for her. "I know. I wanted you to."

"No, but Doctor, I don't want anything we ever had to…keep you alone." The Doctor saw tears in her eyes and he squeezed her hand and nodded.

"Promise me," she urged.

"I promise," he assured her.

Rose wiped away the tears that had fallen from her eyes. "So, tell me about this new companion of yours," she said with a small smile.

The Doctor smiled widely, "Her name is Clara." Rose couldn't help but notice the way his eyes got brighter as he said her name and she felt her own twinge of both hope and sadness.

"What's she like?" Rose asked.

"She's…well she's brave, and sort of…uh…feisty?" He cringed at the word. "I don't like that word," he said decisively. "But you get what I mean. And she's…compassionate…. very compassionate…," he said and a soft smile made its way across his face. "Utterly human," he added with an eye roll and Rose laughed.

Rose listened to all the Doctor's stories of the adventures he had with Clara and while he was talking and she continued eating, she removed her hand from his, thinking he wouldn't notice but of course he did. He saw her hands shake slightly as she slid her hand back to her side of the table and he wanted nothing more than to grab it back and bring it to his chest but of course he didn't. Because he is the Doctor, he let her go and continued on enthusiastically and without pause in his stories.

At one point when the Doctor looked up, the shop was completely empty except for them and the streetlights outside had long since turned on. He sighed. Here Time was again, ticking away his minutes with Rose much too soon.

"Well, I should get back to the TARDIS and let you get back to…well, me," said the Doctor grinning.

Rose smiled and nodded. The Doctor ducked his head embarrassedly as she paid the bill. They both stood up, and walked outside. He grabbed her hand this time and walked with her back towards her home. When they got to her front door again, he didn't make any move to leave. Instead he gazed at her while she shivered and pulled her jacket more tightly around her. He watched the puff of breath from her lips in the cold air. He tried to memorize every second of it. Every chipped fingernail, every stray hair on her head, every whisper of her lashes on her face as she blinked.

The Doctor opened his mouth. And he's about to say it. He is. Rose looked at him expectantly and he wondered if she knew what he wanted to say, needed to say, now that she probably heard it every day from her Doctor. _And oh, how he better tell her every single day, _he thinks, looking down at this woman. This wonderful woman. This shining light in his life. But then the front door opens and a man steps outside.

A man so hauntingly familiar. It's always a shock to see another version of himself but he almost hated it this time. He hated this him for a moment because the very fact he exists is the reason Rose is not still travelling the universe with him now. He's the reason his nights are empty without Rose striding in to join him for a cuddle on the couch in the library. He's the reason he's telling her goodbye again. Then he saw Rose's face when her Doctor appears and the returning gaze he gave her and he still hates but he loves a lot more. He recognized plainly that look between them and knew, knew without a doubt that Rose was right where she's supposed to be.

Rose's Doctor stood there frozen, mouth open in surprise, eyes flicking from the Doctor to Rose, a trash bag in his hand. The Doctor noted his previous self wearing a T-shirt and jeans and smiled at the sight. The other him quickly recovered from his shock.

"Sorry, just realized I forgot to put the trash out," he said grinning at Rose. _Well, he's certainly happy,_ thought the Doctor.

"That's alright, I was just talking to…." And she looked at the Doctor and now he knew she was aware he hadn't wanted to see his other self earlier. _Of course she did_. He blinked in confusion because he couldn't very well say John Smith. _Maybe just John? 'Lots of John's in the world…_

Before he can say anything her Doctor steps forward, free hand outstretched. "Nice, to meet you! I'm the Doctor," he said brightly. He cleared his throat. "Doctor Tyler."

The Doctor nearly laughed at that. So he'd taken her name. _Well, really_, he considered _what better name was there to take? It was just one other way he was tied to Rose. _He grabbed his previous hand and shook it.

"Nice to meet you. 'Name's John," he said. He waited for a flicker of knowledge to appear in the man's eyes at the name but saw nothing. He just smiled and walked to put the bag in bin.

"Well, see you inside lo-" he began awkwardly, looking at Rose, but then he cleared his throat, nodded at the Doctor and went inside.

"Sorry about that," Rose said biting her lip.

"That's alright," said the Doctor waving it off.

"So…can you…will you…come back?" she asked timidly. "I'd like to meet Clara," she added smiling.

The Doctor smiled too and said, "Well I'd say I can't come back but I've been wrong about that too many times before."

"Well if you can come back, give the Doctor and Rose Tyler a ring," she said with a smile but her voice caught in her throat.

The Doctor swallowed heavily and tried to smile back. He gave her a small wave and turned to go but she grabbed his arm and pulled him into one more hug which he returned fiercely. _Please know I love you, _he thought. The Doctor decided he would not be the one to end this hug because it could go on forever as far as he was concerned and so it went on for several minutes until Rose finally released him. She reached up to kiss him on the forehead. His hands clutched her arms tightly and he felt her lips curl up into a smile on his skin. When she leaned back he couldn't speak so he just took a step back and waved. Then he turned around before he had to watch her walk away.

Before he got too far, the Doctor heard Rose call behind him, "Hey, Doctor!" He turned around.

"You were right by the way," she grinned at his puzzled expression, "2005 was a _really _great year." She grinned that tongue in teeth smile one last time.

"Fantastic, even," the Doctor said his voice catching. "See you, Rose Tyler," he said so softly he wasn't sure she heard but when he looked at her teary eyes he knew she did. He waved and turned around, wiping a tear from his own face as he whispered, "Geronimo!"


End file.
